Earlier in this young-but-already-remarkable NBA season, DeMar DeRozan was asked if he thought his fast start compared to the statistics New Orleans Pelicans star Anthony Davis was putting up.
“Nah,” said DeRozan. “Those are video game numbers.”
Well, perhaps it’s the video game age. The NBA season is barely two weeks old and already it appears that NBA2K has been hacked.
Davis has slowed down at little since becoming the first player to score 95 points in the first two games of a season, following his opening night 50 with 45 in his second game of the year. His Pelicans haven’t won a game, but Davis is averaging 30 points, 12.4 rebounds, 2.9 blocks and two steals a game—no one has averaged 30 and 12 since Moses Malone in his 1981-82 MVP season.
But Davis’ start was just the first few notes of a theme song that seems to be ushering in a golden age of talent arriving at its collective competitive peak.
Wednesday night the Raptors got their up-close look the human blur that is Russell Westbrook, who has led the Oklahoma City Thunder to a 6-2 record. The Raptors didn’t stop Westbrook, but they did a reasonable job of containing him.
He ended up with 36 points, seven assists and seven rebounds, but shot just 9-of-25 in the process as the Raptors improved to 5-2 with a 112-102 win over the Thunder.
Still it was another night in a statistical onslaught from Westbrook that is without recent precedent. He’s averaging 31.1 points, 8.3 rebounds and 9.5 assists through eight games. Only one player has matched those thresholds over an entire year, the incomparable Oscar Robertson, and he last managed it in 1964-65.
“He’s perfected the art of getting into the paint and either finishing, dropping it off to the bigs or finding a three-point shooter,” said Raptors assistant coach Rex Kalamian, who was a Thunder assistant for six years. “That didn’t happen by accident. Those are hours and hours in the gym. I was involved. I saw it with my own eyes. He’s the best point guard in the NBA. “
Westbrook and Davis are hardly alone in putting up dizzying numbers. DeRozan also looks like he’s come up with some kind of NBA cheat code. He became the first player since Michael Jordan in 1986 to score at least 30 points in each of the first five games of a season.
DeRozan had an “off” night against the Sacramento Kings on Sunday, putting up “just” 23 points. But even after that outing, he was the NBA’s leading scorer as the Raptors prepared to take on OKC, and he left Chesapeake Arena with an even bigger lead in the scoring race after dropping 37 points on the Thunder.
No Raptor has ever led the NBA in scoring at this stage in a season, and DeRozan is the first player to average at least 34.1 points through the first seven games of the year since Jordan in 1989-90. But what is even harder to get your head around is that DeRozan’s career-best roll might not even crack the league’s top five most-impressive starts.
“It must be in the water or something. I don’t know, but a lot of guys around the league are doing that,” said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey. “I’m glad our guy’s doing it [too].”
A year ago the basketball world was gaga over Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors, and the 2016 NBA MVP remains an epic performer. He followed up a 0-for-10 night from behind the arc against the Los Angeles Lakers on Nov. 4 (breaking his record streak of 157 games with a least one triple) by setting a single-game NBA record with 13 against the Pelicans on Nov. 7.
Then there is Houston Rockets star James Harden, who quietly and without much fanfare seems to have found a match made it scoring heaven with new head coach Mike D’Antoni. It was D’Antoni who ushered in much of the high-pace, three-point heavy style that has seen NBA scoring creep up over the past 10 years when he unleashed Steve Nash on the world with the Phoenix Suns beginning in 2004-05.
In Harden, he has a bigger version of Nash with the added ability to draw fouls at will. He then surrounded Harden with elite three-point shooters and threw third-year pro Clint Capela—rolling to the rim in his best Suns-era Amar’e Stoudemire impersonation—into the mix.
The result is a spread floor, a high pace and Harden with the ball in his hands—his 33.8 percent usage rate would be a career high—and able to make the choice to pull up, attack the rim or kick the ball to shooters at will.
Only two players in NBA history have averaged 30 points and 10 assists a game: Nate Archibald (34 and 11.4 in 1972-73) and Robertson, who did it for five straight years beginning in 1961-62.
At the moment, Harden is averaging 30.6 points and 13 assists (along with 7.8 rebounds). Only four players have ever averaged that many helpers over a full season. The last was John Stockton in 1988-89, and no player has done it while also scoring more than 22 points a game.
It’s early, of course. It’s one thing to put up big numbers over weeks or months and another to do it over an 82-game season.
Is it likely that DeRozan will continue to out-score the career-best 23.5 points per game he averaged last season by more than 10 points a night? Probably not. But as each game passes and he is able to put up another monster outing, it’s clear that something special could be unfolding.
And he’s not alone.
For a generation or more it seemed like all of the NBA’s tallest statistical peaks had been summited—that no one would ever scale Mount Jordan or Mount Robertson again.
It’s early, but in 2016-17 it seems like a number of elite players have set off from base camp with the determination to reach new heights.
